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>Perl 6: The story so far</TH
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>Perl 5 will continue to exist and be maintained.  Perl 5.7 is under
active development now, 5.8 is ahead of us, and there may be more 5.X
versions beyond that.  ActiveState have committed to supporting Perl 5
after Perl 6 is released, and a few individual developers have
said they will continue to work on Perl 5 for as long as necessary.</P
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>It will be at least 2 years until a stable Perl 6, and even longer until
it's widespread.  For comparison, consider that there are
<I
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> people using Perl 4 more than five years
after the release of the much more featureful Perl 5.  Of course,
popular uptake of Perl 6 depends on it being as much of an improvement
over Perl 5 as Perl 5 was over Perl 4.</P
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>Nevertheless, this is not worrying us.  We hope to do it right, rather
than fast.</P
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